The Pinewood Theatre was built by Forest Drive Investments as part of a complex on Forest Drive that included flats. The auditorium was large enough to contain 1000 seats, but to provide ample leg room only 788 seats were installed. The seats were on a sloping floor in a staggered arrangement to ensure clear view […]
Vera Jenkins was a well known character in Pinelands for her cheery disposition, always referring to herself as “old doll”. Residents always looked forward to her cheeky somewhat irreverent poems about Pinelands and life in general at public meetings of the Ratepayers Association. Even her closest friends acknowledged she was eccentric. Vera and her husband,
On Monday June 18 1934, the Cape Times headline posters read “Pinelands Murder Mystery”. The previous morning residents had awoken from a night of heavy rain to be told that a body of a young woman was found lying face down in a deserted area alongside Forest Drive. This was first known murder in Pinelands
The small fruit and vegetable market at Central Square has been run by four generations of the same family since 1961. In the initial planning of the town, a fruit and vegetable market was to be created at the top of Market Way near the station. However, Market Way was renamed Northway as the Market
The old coat of arms for Pinelands is adorned by a squirrel holding what is considered to be an acorn. However close inspection shows it could be a pinecone although it differs from the pinecones on the rest of the coat of arms. The old coat of arms carved in wood, can still be seen
In the early days of Pinelands there was a Police Training Depot with stables for horses in the area of the Oval and the tennis courts. There was a further camp on the Ndabeni border. When the training depot left the area in 1926, there was no police presence and in 1929 Garden Cities considered
Pinelands is surrounded on four sides by railway track, so it follows that rail transport plays a major part in the history of Pinelands. Raapenberg Station was the first railway station to service Pinelands. It was originally just a low wooden deck and hut serviced by steam trains. Later a full station was built but
The worst train accident in the Pinelands area took place in 1960. On Tuesday 7 June 1960 at 3 minutes to 8 am a train pulled out from Raapenberg Station in Pinelands heading towards Langa Station in heavy rain. The train was returning to Langa after dropping off passengers and was carrying 20 passengers. Six
Halfway House at the top of Woodside Drive was a wood and iron structure that had been the home of the Plague Hospital superintendent. It became the office of the Pinelands Bus Company (Pty) Ltd when a Pinelands resident, Mrs Dennison, started the bus service between Pinelands and Mowbray in 1929. Mr. Moore, a neighbour,
Hannes Uys moved into “Sonskyn” at 10 Homestead Way with his wife Helga, son Pieter-Dirk and daughter Tessa in 1949. The road was named after the old Uitvlugt Farm homestead which had stood at numbers 4 and 6 but which had been demolished some seven years earlier. Hannes had grown up in Paarl but studied
